Al Qaeda Returns: They say timing is everything
Edward Kenney Afghanistan Study Group
One day after a White House Report on Afghanistan and Pakistan stated that “al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership in Pakistan is weaker and under more sustained pressure than at any other point since it fled Afghanistan”, journalists from the Wall Street Journal report that al Qaeda (AQ) is moving back into Konar province and that as recently as last September, U.S. jets bombed an AQ terrorist training camp in Konar’s Korengal Valley killing two senior operatives.
To refresh the memory, international forces abandoned the Korengal last spring, deeming the valley strategically unimportant. The Afghanistan Study Group, including yours truly, applauded the decision. So the obvious, uncomfortable question is this: Does this development fundamentally change the Afghanistan Study Group’s recommendations? The answer is an unequivocal no.
The likelihood that al Qaeda would move back to Afghanistan from its sanctuaries in Pakistan always seemed remote, given the U.S.’s tactical capabilities. If al Qaeda attempted to return, the thinking went, they would likely face the full fury of the U.S. military. The bombing of the AQ training camp in the Korengal in many ways supports this analysis. By withdrawing coalition forces and drawing al Qaeda into this power vacuum, the U.S. probably increased its ability to target the terrorists[i]. Furthermore, it is not clear how significant the withdrawal was to al Qaeda’s “resurgence”. Subsequent reports show strikes against al Qaeda which predate coalition withdrawal, and General Petraeus is on record this week as saying that al Qaeda is “less of a presence” in Afghanistan.
The Wall Street Journal article does not discuss the U.S.’s counter-terror operations in Pakistan, but most of the evidence suggests that our efforts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are failing and ineffective: The initial success of drone strikes in Pakistan is showing serious diminishing returns with only two high ranking terrorist on the most wanted list killed in 2010 despite a dramatic increase in aerial strikes. Furthermore, as the new progress report admits, Pakistani forces have failed to maintain control of the FATA. According to the progress report, in one “agency” in the tribal areas, the Pakistani military has had to clear insurgents three times in the past two years. Afghanistan seems like a much more vulnerable space for al Qaeda at present.
Furthermore, as the Wall Street Journal makes clear, our counter-terror resources—particularly the Joint Special Operations Command—are already spread quite thin between troubled hot spots Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. If limited resources are the problem, it seems fairly obvious that garrisoning troops ad infinitum in all of these problem countries is clearly not the answer. So, before committing ourselves to increasingly costly strategy, let’s remember that al Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan is a likely strategic blunder for the terrorists. As long as the U.S. maintains its counter-terror capabilities—a key Afghanistan Study Group recommendation—Afghanistan will be a very dangerous place for al Qaeda.
[i] There are obvious parallels to Iraq, where al Qaeda was drawn into the chaos and eventually suffered a major strategic defeat, not to justify by any means Bush’s ill-advised Iraq invasion.
